Former Louisville Cardinals basketball head coach Rick Pitino has filed a civil suit against Adidas America just one day after he was officially fired from the Cardinals’ program on Monday. Here are the details of the suit, from ESPN’s Mark Schlabach:
Former Louisville coach Rick Pitino is suing Adidas in federal court
The former head coach was fired from Louisville on Monday.
Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images
In the civil lawsuit, Pitino alleges he suffered damages as a result of Adidas’ “outrageous conduct in conspiring to funnel money to the family of a college basketball recruit...all without Coach Pitino’s knowledge, participation, or acquiescence.”
According to the Louisville-Courier Journal, Adidas terminated its deal with the school just hours after Pitino was fired on Monday afternoon.
The Courier Journal also reports that Pitino, who was the Louisville head coach for 16 seasons, had “personal contact” with Adidas before the company entered in its apparel and shoe deal with the university, which was signed in 2014.
Earlier this month, the details of Pitino’s contract, which still has $46 million left on it, were revealed, and most of Adidas’ money from the agreement went to Pitino directly:
Here’s a hell of a piece of news, though, from the Louisville Courier-Journal:
In fact, under [the University of Louisville’s] current deal with Adidas, which expires July 1, 98 percent of the cash provided by Adidas goes to one person: Rick Pitino, the now-suspended head coach.
In 2015-16, for example, $1.5 million went to Pitino under his personal services agreement with the apparel company while just $25,000 went to the program, according to a contract obtained by the Courier-Journal under the state public records act.
The year before, Pitino also got $1.5 million, while the department banked just $10,000.
There are obviously a lot of different pieces to this thing, so it will be interesting to see how it all plays out. Adidas has not made a comment at this time.
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